


Accidental Dating

by noodlerdoodler



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 05:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4551822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlerdoodler/pseuds/noodlerdoodler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which, a certain Will Solace finds himself accidentally caught up in a relationship with boy that doesn't speak and he isn't quite sure how it happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accidental Dating

I can't really remember the first time I became aware of the boy that was always at our basketball practices. Well, not at our basketball practices but watching them. Once or twice I remember glancing back and seeing the hunched over figure out of the corner of my eye but I never really payed much attention to him. After all, a handful of people normally watched our basketball practices and I just tried to block them out so that I could focus. But it was sometime during early summer/late spring that I accidentally catch the eye of the boy that sitting on the bleachers. 

He's sitting there, dressed in all black- and he's wearing a jacket! And combat boots! He must be dying!- despite the heat, staring down at some notebook or book or whatever. He's got a pencil in hand so it's most likely a notebook and he's drawing or writing or something with his eyebrows pulled together in a frown. 

Then, as if he can sense my gaze, he looks up abruptly and I find myself staring into his eyes. I can't tell what colour they are from here but I can see that they've been thickly outlined and I blink at him and that's when I realise that our break is over and the game has resumed. I realise this because I'm hit on the head by a basketball and stumble backwards cursing. When I look up again, the boy has vanished. 

After practice, I shower and change and I'm heading back to my home which is just down the block when the boy makes a sudden reappearance in front of me.

"Uh... Hi?" I say and I earn myself a scowl. Up close, his eyes are definitely a dark kind of brown and he's got that pale look about him but his skin isn't really that pale. It's like an olive colour, Italian-looking, but the amount of black he's wearing makes him look pale.

"Can I help you?" I try again but I still don't get more than an eyeroll in response so I decide to just keep walking and get home as soon as possible. He walks alongside me, his notebook(?) tightly gripped in his left hand, and does until I reach my house.

"Uh..." I look down at him and gesture towards my house, "This is me. Bye." He shrugs at me like he doesn't care (and maybe he doesn't) and then continues walking.

I thought that would be the last that I ever saw of the kid but he seemed to take it upon himself as some sort of responsibility to walk me home every single day after that. He watches our practice, waits patiently, and then walks all the way home with me. All the time, he doesn't speak a single word despite my attempts to make conversation and the awkwardness hangs in the air like fog. I wonder why he doesn't want to talk to me but he'll walk me home. 

After weeks and weeks of this, he starts to bother me during school hours too. Somehow, he knows where my locker is and he hangs out around there looking casual until I show up. And he's more than happy to walk me to every single class to a point where I'm used to looking down and seeing the dark haired boy at my side. And this whole time, he's just answered my questions with shrugs or huffs or glowers like me being friendly wasn't allowed. 

I'm still trying though, pushing him for answers and getting frustrated and all the more curious when I don't get any. And he's walking me everywhere by this point and I like seeing him standing by my locker but I'm starting to wonder if he even has any friends or any personality judging by how quiet he is. One morning, I'm heading for my locker when I'm surprised to see that he's not standing there. He doesn't show up all day and that's when I realise that I have a problem.

Because this kid that started out as a mild annoyance has quickly become one of my favourite people to be around, since he doesn't seem to mind me breaking my golden-boy persona and talking about all the things I'm worried about. He doesn't say anything back, he just shrugs, and it's oddly reassuring. And when he's not in, I realise just how much I like him being around and this concerns me. Because I have plenty of friends but without him around, I feel incredibly lonely. 

Luckily, he's back the next day and looking even more tired than usual, as he walks me around but at the end of the day, he doesn't let me go home. Instead, he takes me by the arm and leads me determinedly around to the other side of town and into a graveyard there. It's a fancy place with marble headstones and he seems to know where he's going, like he's done this a million times before. 

I wonder if this is where he takes all his first dates. 

He stops in front of a headstone that doesn't look too different from the rest other than the fact it's got fresh flowers laying beside it. The headstone has three names listed: a mother, a father and a sister. I look at it for a moment and then at the strange kid standing beside me. My heart turns cold.

"I'm sorry." I tell him and he laughs, shaking his head. It's the closest things I've ever heard to words coming from his mouth but it's a delicate sound, a shattered kind of laugh like he wants to cry and scoff at once. We stand there a while longer before I really do need to get home and I tell him so before hurrying off. When I look back, he's sat by the gravestone and I have to swallow the lump in my throat. 

The next few weeks are uneventful and we just walk together in a sort of silent pact and I think about the boy beside me. If the names on the graves match up to his, his last name is di Angelo, which I think is really interesting. Definitely Italian. And if those are his family members buried in that graveyard, who does he live with? Where does he live? Why doesn't he seem to have any friends and why on earth do I care so much about finding the answers to these questions? 

It's one of the last days of the freshman year that he dares to approach me and sit at my lunch table. As if by magic, all of my friends immediately have somewhere else they realise that they need to be and get up and leave abruptly. The boy gives off this kind of aura that drives people away from him, a kind of creepy aura, but I think he might just be kinda sad. He sits across from me and pushes his beloved sketchbook across the table. 

The whole year, I don't think I've seen him without the thing and he's never so much as let me glance at it before. If I try to, the book is immediately snapped shut and he glares at me. But now, he's gesturing for me to open it and I do. I turn the pages carefully because I don't want to damage anything. And I'm confronted by drawings- most of them of me. Which makes me both flinch back and lean in closer.

"These are really good." I tell him, for lack of something interesting to say. He shrugs at me. 

There's drawings of other things, of course, of gravestones and flowers and the sky and anything that seems boring but he's made it beautiful. Sometimes, there are words or phrases scrawled on the pages in bad handwriting that I'm either reading wrong or they seem out of place and confusing. 

I finish flipping through and try to hand the sketchbook back to him. He shakes his head and for the first time all year, I think I see a smile tugging at his lips but it's only for half a second and afterwards, I'm not sure if I just imagined it. He gestured to the book and then to me and it took my dumb brain a moment but I understood. He wanted me to keep it. It was a gift. I had to swallow hard because my throat was so damn dry.

"Thank you." I say and he shrugs again. He stays there and fiddles absentmindedly with one of the many rings on his fingers until the bell rings. Then, he escorts me to next period. 

I spend the rest of the day flipping through the sketchbook and looking for any kind of information on the boy that I think I might be in love with or something because it can't be normal to obsess over anyone this much. His drawings really are beautiful and make up for his lack of words considerably. 

I'm beginning to wonder if the not-talking isn't because of shyness or reluctancy but another reason. When I meet him after practice and we head home, I whistle loudly to fill the silence. And we reach my house and I'm about to head inside when he grabs me by the arm and pulls me back. For a moment, he's just staring at me and I'm staring at his mouth which is surprisingly close to mine now that I'm leant over. He looks like he doesn't know what to do so I lean in and do it for him, pressing a brief kiss to his lips. 

He inhales sharply and his badly-painted nails dig into the skin of my arm. He licks his lips and opens his mouth like he wants to say something. Unsurprisingly, nothing comes out and he gestures for me to sit down. 

Which is how I end up sat on the sidewalk outside my house with a boy that doesn't have any words and for once, I don't make any attempt to fill the silence. It feels like we're waiting for something and I'm not sure what, as we sit there in the sun as minutes turn to hours. More than once, he opens his mouth and clears his throat like he's ready to speak but he doesn't follow through. I'm just getting up and heading to the house for dinner when it happens.

"Nico!" He chokes out suddenly, out of nowhere and so quietly that for a moment, I'm not even sure that he said anything; then, he continues, "My name is Nico." I offer him one of my very best smiles and take his hand and shake it firmly.

"It's nice to meet you, Nico." He scowls at me in response and pulls his hand back but the spell of silence is broken and that's got to be a start. He hurries home and I head inside.

I didn't think I would see him again after summer vacation started and for a few days, I was proved right. Until one morning, when my mom calls me down because I've apparently got a friend round. And I'm confronted by the sight of Nico Di Angelo standing in my living room, looking so helplessly out of place surrounded by the cream walls and orange couches and curtains that I almost start laughing. He shifts from foot to another. 

I say something to my mom about being back later and she tells us to have a good time and just like that, I'm spending a day out in town with Nico Di Angelo. We head to the mall and he takes me to McDonalds and I manage to get another full sentence out of him, ("I eat here almost everyday."), which proves that I'm definitely getting somewhere. And we mooch around the stores and he shows me where he buys his art supplies and he's got a shine in his eye and a hint of a smile on his lips. 

And that's the beginning of a series of summer outings with Nico: he takes me to the pool the next day and to see a basketball game a week or two later and there's trips to the mall and the beach and the boardwalk and comic book stores. We always have a good time despite him hardly speaking because he may not have words to offer but he has smiles. 

Nico di Angelo rarely offers smiles but when he does, it's like seeing the most beautiful thing you've ever seen times infinity. I nearly passed out at the sight of it the first time. And then, there's the days where he spends time at my house and we hang out in my room and I show him everything and anything I can because I desperately want to seem interesting to him. 

He's interested in thumbing through my book collection and once he finds my old packs of Mythomagic cards, I find out what a fiend for it he is (he kicks my butt literally every single game and reigns as the undefeated champion all summer). He often stays for dinner and my mom grows to like him, though she does pull me aside to ask why he's so quiet. I shrug and know that Nico would be proud of my response. 

But those are only the days and they aren't as intimate as the nights. For whatever reason, Nico doesn't seem to be able to sleep and more often than not, I hear him knocking at my window in the night. He climbs up the tree in my yard and I unlatch the window and he climbs inside. And we spend the evenings together, just being. 

Normally, he climbs into bed with me and curls up against my chest and this is quickly becoming a regular thing. I've grown used to having his wiry arms tangled around me when I sleep and I'm used to waking up to him drooling on my pillow in the morning. Despite the drool, he still manages to look incredibly cute when he's all fluffy haired with smudged eyeliner and wearing one of his pyjama shirts. I can't help wondering what exactly Nico is to me when I see him tangled in my bed sheets and mumbling incoherently in his sleep but I shrug it off. We'll figure something out later. 

It's the morning following one of Nico's sleepovers that I wake to find him sitting on the end of my bed and wearing my varsity jacket, even if it is much too big for him and makes him look even smaller than usual. He smiles when he sees me sitting up and looking at him blearily. As somebody that wakes up early, I'm always up first and this feels strange. 

"Hey." Nico says and it shouldn't be a big deal but my heart flutters.

"Hey." I nod to my jacket hanging off his small frame, "You look good." He shrugs.

"There's somewhere I want to go." This is the most he's ever contributed to a conversation and he speaks with such sincerity that I get the idea that today is not going to be another trip to the pool. And I get out of bed and I get dressed and it's about then that I realise he's stolen a pair of my jeans as well.

"You could've asked, Nico." He shrugs at me again and I guess that the conversation is over so I dress quickly and it's much too early for my mom to be awake so we just head out. Nico says that it's too far to walk so we bike instead. I walk my bike over to his house whilst he grabs his and for the first time in my life, I get to see Nico's house. And I recognise it. This is house belongs to Hazel Levesque and I never even realised that he lived here but of course, it's obvious now, that Nico's gotta be adopted or fostered or something so it makes sense. We head out on our bikes, Nico wobbling uncertainly.

I follow him all the way across town and then, out of town and I begin to wonder where we're going. The next town isn't too far away but I'm still surprised when Nico swerves towards it and continues into town. He doesn't head for the centre but for a street that seemingly leads to nowhere and there, right at the end of the street, there's an old house.

"Is this where you used to live?" I guess and he laughs and shakes his head. He ditches his bike outside and heads inside, climbing through over the gate with ease despite the caution warning. I think before following, hurdling the fence and climbing through a broken window after him. It's a house that's crumbling to pieces and looks like a place that kids in our neighbourhood would dare each other to enter. The house is scarce of furniture but Nico doesn't seem to care because he's smiling ever so faintly and I want to kiss him right there and then. So, I do. 

The gesture makes his cheeks flush and he scowls at me. And we hang around for a while longer, Nico showing me around like its his house or something. I tell him so and he gets offended, puffing out his small chest.

"This is my house!" He proclaims.

"But you said this isn't where you used to live?" I blinked at him in confusion.

"My family owned a lot of houses." Nico says, "This is going to be mine when I'm old enough." He looks fiercely proud that he owns his own house and I don't dare question him.

After we get tired- never bored because I can't get bored when I have Nico to look at- we head back to his house for once and I'm introduced to Hazel and her mom, both of which I vaguely recognise. Hazel told me I was doing a good job "at the basketball team game thingy" and her mom smiled at me in a strange kind of way and then, we were free. 

I was allowed into Nico's room, which was surprisingly painted in soft blues and wasn't covered in heavy metal posters like I expected it to be. There were family photographs and books and textbooks and all that boring stuff laying around. He had a seemingly endless collection of Mythomagic cards and figurines lined up on his desk. His bed was a singular one, unlike mine, and he say gingerly on the edge of it as he watched me examine his room with interest. 

He looks to me with a raised an eyebrow, as if asking my opinion. I shrug and he looks like he wants to laugh. And he pats the spot beside him on the bed and I collapse there, flopping onto my back. He spends the rest of the day showing me all these things I didn't know about him since he doesn't speak anymore, not since his family died. I got that much out of him when it was late and he was too tired to remember to keep his mouth shut. I stayed the night. 

The rest of the summer continues like that; Nico becomes increasingly more comfortable with speaking until we can almost hold full-length conversations regularly and that's pretty nice. We spend days out together during simple things that most people do on dates and other days visiting the places Nico feels most content. There's a handful of them, I soon find out, and I get to see every single one as the summer progresses. 

By the time September rolls around, he hasn't claimed the official title of boyfriend but he might as well have because we're always together and when we aren't, we're texting (his texts are full of the words he can't say) and when we're in no way connected, I'm thinking about him and when I'll next see him. It's hopelessly cliché to say that but it's true and I'm past the point of caring anymore. 

When we head back to school, he stays firmly at my side, staying quieter now that there are other people around but he's always there. He walks me to school, home from school and he sits with me at lunch. Eventually, my friends adjust to him being there and though they're still uneasy about him, they let Nico stay. Sometimes, he grabs my hand under the table to make me grin. 

And I find myself becoming all too aware of the boy, dressed all in black, sitting with his sketchbook on the bleachers during basketball practice. Every few minutes, I'll look over and catch his eye and we'll share a small smile so that nobody will catch us. I find myself wondering how I managed to ever miss him sitting there in the first place, he's so noticeable now. 

After practice, we walk home and he stays quiet most of the way there. But not today, today he talks quietly about how he's never had anyone to date before. He's never had anyone he's liked before aside from this long-term crush he had on Percy Jackson. And then, he kisses me on the mouth and he speaks: 

"That's why I'd really like you to be my boyfriend, Will." And he hurries away before I can respond. 

So, yeah, I'm pretty sure we're dating now.


End file.
